1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally pertains to the field of interactive television (TV) Set-Top Boxes (STB), electronic commerce and the merging of technology and personal services.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are approximately 1.5 billion TV sets in homes around the world and 400 million PCs in households worldwide. A conventional set-top box is a device that enhances the viewer's TV experience by incorporating therein some of the functionality of computers, by enabling the TV to become a user interface to the Internet and by enabling the TV to receive and decode digital television broadcasts. Some STBs even provide integrated videoconferencing functionality as well as video editing and Internet-enabled home video security, such as described in U.S. patent Ser. No. 5,905,521. STBs such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,521 also feature “Personal Identification” remote control devices capable of automatically identifying the user holding the remote control and producing his credentials (personal and financial information, for example) when conducting secure transactions either locally or with a remote server.
Such heavily featured STBs are highly desirable for most TV viewers who do not want to be confronted with the usual headaches of setting up and upgrading the hardware and software of a typical personal computer, as well as for hotels and motels who need to attract the new generation of customers accustomed to Internet everywhere. Advances in silicon integration are breathtaking and it is foreseen that most of the features listed above will soon only require only a few integrated circuits (ICs).
However, time to market considerations and proof of concept cycles do not yet permit to derive the perfect architecture for the STB of the future. For example, until High Definition Television (HDTV) is widely available, the resolution of TV screens is not adequate for comfortably carrying out such activities as email and web browsing. To draw from another example, STBs are beginning to offer Internet broadband to the entire home network, thereby potentially making everybody's confidential information accessible to and available from the Internet. However, the privacy risks inherent in such capabilities have not yet been seriously considered.
Moreover, the STB e-commerce model is presently ill defined, as it is directly derived from the PC e-commerce model traditionally practiced using a PC connected to the Internet and a web browser. Although goods and services providers can offer attractive, practical, efficient and reliable e-commerce via the Internet, a typical end-to-end e-commerce transaction can take several minutes to complete. As there are no dedicated peripherals to speed up the entry of user credentials and the item chosen, all the details must be entered via a keyboard and mouse.
Moreover, existing e-commerce methods can leave the consumer wondering whether the online transaction was successfully completed. At times, the consumer may not be certain that the online transaction was successfully completed until the goods actually show up at the door. A good practice is for the e-commerce provider to send an acknowledgment of the consumer's order by email, the email containing all of the details needed to allow the user to check on the current status of the order. E-commerce sites such as Amazon.com have refined the process in order to provide an excellent quality of service that most have come appreciate and trust. For example, the “1-click” purchase model patented by Amazon.com considerably speeds up the purchase of items for already registered users, and the user need not wait online for a confirmation that the credit card payment was accepted. Moreover, easy account access allows the user to check the status of a pending order and the status of the delivery. Every change made either by the user or by the provider is automatically acknowledged in an email message posted to the user.
Removing the issue of bad or non-payment, such a transactional model for executing an online transaction is essentially biased in favor of the provider, in that the provider always knows whether the purchase request is valid or is invalid. In contrast, the online shopper may have doubts as to the success of his or her purchase request until such time as an explicit acknowledgment is provided, which may not occur until a quite a significant time after the online order has been submitted. Typically, the acknowledgment is supplied as a displayed message or an email. This is because e-commerce servers are not optimized to provide an instantaneous acknowledgment of a purchase request, especially when a clearing bank is involved in validating a credit card purchase. This is particularly annoying for viewers waiting to resume their STB/TV entertainment experience.
Consequently, because of the lack of a reliable, speedy and trusted e-commerce transactional model for transactions of all sizes (including very small valued transactions), consumer-oriented Internet appliances such as STBs that are optimized to carry out e-micro-commerce are quasi-inexistent.